WARRI— DELTA State governor, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, said weekend that the Anti-kidnapping Bill passed by the state House of Assembly was  yet to be signed into law because he didn’t believe in death sentence.

This came as the governor and the state Commissioner of Police, Mamman Tsafe, blamed the rising wave of kidnapping in the country on the fact that criminals had abandoned armed robbery because of the ease with which kidnapping is executed and the more money it fetches.

The House of Assembly had since 2009, amongst others, recommended death sentence for those found guilty of kidnapping,  but the Bill is yet to be signed into law by the governor.

Speaking in an interview with Vanguard in Asaba weekend, Governor Uduaghan said:  “I don’t believe in death sentence. I don’t believe that death sentence will solve kidnapping, death sentence has not stopped armed robbery since it was introduced.

“Rather, armed robbers have even become deadlier in their operations. There are laws already that make kidnapping a crime, so it is not because I did not sign it that things are going wrong. I don’t agree that kidnappers should be sentenced to death, which is how I see it.”

He, however, said he was discussing with the House of Assembly to find a middle ground, which a source told Vanguard could be long term imprisonment for those found guilty by the court.

The governor, alongside the police commissioner, rejected insinuations that the state had metamorphosed into the “kidnapping capital” of the country, saying the situation was not out of control in Delta, especially as measures had been stepped up to deal with it.

Uduaghan, who sounded confident that kidnappers would soon be on the run from the state,  said:  “We have arrested over 30 kidnap suspects. Many of them are from the South-East. You know soldiers were deployed to the South-East to tackle kidnappers, so some of them are escaping and finding their way to Delta State again after we had dealt with them here.”

“But the thing really is that kidnapping has become a commercial venture, much more lucrative than armed robbery, that is why they are going into it.”

On the insinuation that the state has gradually become the ‘kidnapping capital’ of the country, the governor  said the impression was wrong, stressing that the situation was under control.

On the strategy to keep kidnappers in check, he said:  “There is very little I can say  about our strategy because once I start divulging our strategy, of course, the criminals will know what you want to do and they will move ahead of you.

“Last Thursday, I stepped up a few things, by this morning (Friday), a few operations are going on in certain parts of the state and I am expecting that it will yield good results.

“When you use the word- rampage, that means the matter has become uncontrollable, that is not quite true, yes the number has increased, the rate of kidnapping, especially in certain parts of the state, but is not gone beyond control, it is still within control.”
On his part, the state Commissioner of Police, Tsafe told Vanguard in an interview in Asaba that the reason kidnapping was on the increase was the fact that the crime had become more lucrative than armed robbery.

He said:  “The reasons kidnapping is on the increase is that kidnapping has started becoming more lucrative and less trouble-free for the criminals, and relations of the victims don’t want to report to the police  because they  fear the kidnappers will threaten them with the issue of killing the victims if they intimate us”.

He said the fear of the relations and families of victims of kidnap cases to report to the police was really a problem.
The commissioner said:  “We have done our best in cases when the relations of the victims decided to cooperate with the police. In most cases, we were able to rescue the victims and deal with the kidnappers.

“Every kidnapper has taking kidnapping as a much lucrative business, it is very unfortunate, but that is the situation. Some people have made up their hearts that they want to become millionaires overnight with the wealth of others, which they did not work for. We need more cooperation from the people to stem crime.

“Already, we have launched a joint operation, involving the military, SSS, recognized vigilante groups, and in due course, we will get them.

“We are working on the sponsors, we have a lot of theories, some will bring this, some will bring that, but I won’t want to disclose this on the pages of the newspapers. We are thinking of the basis of the sponsorship. I will beg you to allow that to remain with me.

“There are many insinuations, they are highly privileged people who have acknowledgment of the society, and we wouldn’t like to say that this thing happened until we can establish that it actually happened, but I know that one day, we will reach there.”

Posted by admin on Jun 26 2011. Filed under Delta, Headlines, State News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry